Arrangements by Larry Coryell.
Co-production, recording and co-arrangements by Paul Santa Maria.
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5. May This Be Love

Recorded at Yellow House Studio 13 during August 2002.
Engineered and Produced by Leo Leoni.
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9. Red House

Recorded at Smash Studios and Jeff's Place, New York City.
Engineered by Joe Barbaria and Hiram Bullock.
Mixed at Audio Dolci by Joe Barbaria.
Hiram Bullock uses Mark Guitar amplifiers.
Hiram Bullock appears courtesy of ESC Records.
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11. Up From The Skies

TONY SPINNER: Vocals, Guitars, Bass & Drums

Recorded at "The Farm" in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
Recorded, Engineered and Produced by Tony Spinner.
Thanks to Ernie Ball for strings, picks, cables, etc. and to Steve Lukather
for the cool Ernie Ball "Luke" guitar... Thanks to Jimi Hendrix for great music.
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12. Stone Free

Recorded & Mixed by Ron DeRollo at Lakewood Studios, Jamesville, NY.
Produced by MARK DOYLE.
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13. I Don't Live Today

PAT TRAVERS: Guitar & Bass
SEAN SHANNON: Drums

Recorded 3-11-02 at the RedRoom, Orlando, Florida, USA.
Recorded and mixed by Sean Shannon

Pat Travers would like to thank: Everyone at home and Dean Markley Strings.

Recorded & Mastered at Dreamstate Productions, Cleveland, OH.
Engineered by Brandon Youngs.
Amplification by John Leanord.

A LONG-TIME DREAM: A WORD BY THE PRODUCER

I believe the first time I listened to Hendrix, I was at some friend's in 1967. His older sister had given him a 45rpm from a juke-box. On one side there was Purple Haze, and on side B 31st Anniversary.
This guy was a black American guitarist with Cherokee blood in his veins, who lived in England, and I instantly knew I would love his music forever.
In 1967 Hendrix actually was already a star. But I was only 14, lived in Italy, the land of mandolins and easy songs and couldn't quite keep up with the raves of the UK music scene.
I think I listened only to him from then to 1973. I really couldn't bring myself to listen to other music that wasn't Hendrix's: all the rest seemed to be too simple, too boring. Yet the other guys on the scene didn't have any fault…it was Hendrix who was way too ahead of his time.
I recall Albert King once said: "Hendrix's blues comes from Mars". Boy, he was right…
You'll have figured out that to me he was just the greatest, not just as a guitar player, but mainly as an innovator and as songwriter: his music and lyrics are real masterpieces.
For instance, you can listen to Electric Ladyland a thousand times and always find out something new that you didn't notice before.
When playing live Hendrix created the impression that his guitar had a life of its own: it just seemed that there actually were two entities playing, the man and his instrument.
If we think about the legacy he left us in just 4 years, one could say it's like his creative vein was bound to finish soon. As soon as he untimely passed away.
I gave life to this project because I have had this passion for a lifetime and had been thinking about it for a long time. Although many tributes to Jimi have been released so far, it made sense to me for once that could be a bunch of guitarists, his "ideal fellows", to record his music.
All the artists involved in this tribute have been left totally free to choose, arrange and play Jimi's songs as they liked most. All of them were just great, a group of true professionals, some being renown stars of rock, jazz and blues music and some being lesser known musicians of extraordinary talent. Most of all they were so easygoing and nice that we truly had fun assembling this project.
My wish here is to deeply thank them all and I hope this record may be a further confirmation for the most famous and a chance to come to the front line for the rest.
Let me end my introduction by wishing that someday it may be possible to organize a big benefit concert with all these 15 stars together, maybe in the island of Maui, Hawaii. I think Jimi would approve. And have fun from there above.
Giorgio Mangora

STEVE LUKATHER
The Guitar, bass and Drums were live, NO overdubs except for the sound efx and spoken words.
We had fun doing this as it is one of Jimi's most challenging pieces. I remember listening to this in 1967, I was 10, and my Dad came in the room and looked at the album cover and looked at me and listened to the music, and shook his head and left the room. I guess he wasn't "experienced" haha. Needless to say, I am along time Jimi fan and always will be!!

SCOTT FINCH
I continue to be blown away by the well thought out, perfectly executed, concise "studio Hendrix".......if I listen to any 10 or 20 second segment of any song I will find something new to learn, even if I learned that same segment before! If I listen to a modern guitar player, I can usually tell within a few minutes what his favorite Hendrix song is. "Castles Made of Sand" is in almost every song I play. I can't help it. It's just there.

JIMMY HASLIP
Jimi Hendrix is one of the reasons I am playing music today . . . I saw him live in concert 5 different times between 1967 and 1970. As a aspiring left handed bassist, seeing him up close was an experience of a lifetime. His musicianship and persona gave me a whole new outlook on life and eventually was the inspiration I needed to follow my dream of becoming a serious professional musician. I will forever praise him and his music for giving me that gift.

LARRY CORYELL
Where to begin to speak of Jimi? Shall I talk about the very first night, when Danny Kalb and I sat together in the back of the "Scene" club in New York's Hell's Kitchen and watched Jimi go through his paces, complete with equipment problems and breakdowns?
Shall I talk about how we were "not so impressed" with Jimi that night as we were with Noel and Mitch? I think we were intimidated during the few moments when Jimi was not having equipment problems, he was playing great; when his pedal broke, however, Mitch and Noel continued on in such a strong way that you didn't notice the guitar was missing . . . then there was the episode in another song where Jimi broke a string and then changed the string while the guitar was feeding back and made it all sound like it was an integral part of the performance.
Then there was the recording session a few blocks from the "Scene" at the Record Plant; this was where I saw Jimi record "House Burning Down." I accidentally/on purpose pulled one of his joints off the recording console, smoked it, and then kind of hid in the corner when he came into the room between takes and asked "who smoked that joint I left on the console?" I was embarrassed and speechless actually, Jimi didn't care, that night the entire studio was packed by his fans, strewn around the floors of the control room and the studio itself. There was plenty of dope goin' around.
Jimi was a great guitar player; Clapton referred to his "strong fingers"; I agreed; Jimi's string-bending ability and his patented Strat sound will never be matched or equaled. The only guitarist since then who's playing touched me similar to Jimi's was the great Stevie Ray . . .but back to Jimi's compositions.
"House Burnin' Down" is a song about peace; it's anti-war, anti-violence. Jimi was a poet and he had the heart of a pacifist. After so many years it was fitting that my son Murali would sing a Hendrix lyric; when Murali was just a few weeks old, his mother and I brought him in his little basket to the Fillmore East for my gig with Jack Bruce and Mitch Mitchell, and Jimi showed up in the dressing room and looked down on my infant son, there was a mystic connection there. Murali turned out to be a great musician and singer, influenced by the best of the sixties' music, most notably Jimi's.
"Purple Haze" was always one of Jimi's "flag-wavers", replete with loudness and distortion; so when the guys at Horizons asked me to do it, I went the other way and did the front half of the arrangement on acoustic guitars, and of course, I altered the piece harmonically. The back half, which is electric (Paul Santa Maria's custom Les Paul) is an arranged mix of Jimi's band's "Purple" chords with a theme I composed about my sons, Murali and Julian (you should hear HIM), called "Toy Soldiers."
Many praises have gone to Eddie Kramer for recording Jimi "back in the day". I'd like to shower similar kudos to Paul Santa Maria for his great ear for recording a guitar; he has a knack for make a guitar sound strong, and fat; Paul turned out to be my "Eddie Kramer."
This is a great honor to participate in a project involving one of the greatest musicians of the 20th Century, Jimi Hendrix; I can't wait to do more; I hope Jimi is listening!

JEFF RICHMAN
Jimi Hendrix has been one of my strongest guitar influences.
I distinctly remember my first "Jimi Hendrix" experience. At the age of fifteen as I was going to sleep in my room, the radio played a new release: "Purple Haze". Upon first hearing this music, it shot through my body like an lightning bolt - I actually stood up as I was completely mesmerized by this new, adventurous, exciting sound.
I immediately bought his first album "Are You Experienced" which was my favorite recording for years to come. I was also very lucky to have heard him perform live at three glorious concerts where I grew up in Hawaii. These experiences are a part of my soul, my heart, my being, my life - they are with me in spirit when I play.
I chose these two tunes because they are slightly off the beaten path of the Hendrix classics. Plus they were good vehicles for me to add my own voice through the arrangements. I decided to not use a Stratocaster - instead I played a guitar in the same family but with a slightly different sound: a Telecaster. I was lucky to record these tunes with some of my favorite players: Jimmy Haslip on bass and Gary Novak on drums. Their playing has that urgent rock intensity blended with a jazz sophistication. The adventurous vision of my long time collaborator and Producer Philip Giffin,
helped make this recording something I am very proud of.

ALESSIO MENCONI
When I speak about Jimi it's just like I'm speaking of a father. The first Hendrix record, I bought when I was 12, and I never "parted" from this artist since. Every time I listen to him, I still am struck by his passion and humanity and by the energy and the melancholy alike of his music. I believe he was one of the greatest music geniuses of last century and that he still can be an inspiration to any musician, not just to guitarists.

ARLEN ROTH
The two Jimi Hendrix tunes I have selected to play on this project, each have a special meaning to me.
The Wind Cries Mary was on his first album, of course, and was like a breath of fresh air when I first heard it. At the time of its release I was really into clean guitar playing and didn't go in for much of that psychedelic stuff. I somehow didn't respond immediately to this side of his playing, as I instead do now. But when I first heard that song I could hear how he was taking a cleaner, more true-to-his-roots R&B approach.
And since I was such a lover of country guitar at the time, I couldn't help but notice all those nice pentatonic hammer-ons, and his delicate touch that so much turned me on!
That's why in my interpretation of this tune you may hear even more country, because that's how I hear it!
Every summer of my youth, my family rented and then owned a small house on White Lake, NY, where Yasgur's Farm was and where the Woodstock festival was held in 1969. I went back and forth to the festival many times over those 3 days and had around 4 surprise guests staying on the lawn of my house and even indoors. And I could actually hear Jimi's playing drifting over the water that early morning!
One year later, on that same spot, same day in 1970, my band, STEEL, performed for 8 straight hours for more than 10000 camper who came to celebrate Woodstock's 1st anniversary.
It was on that day that we played Villanova Junction Blues for the first time, evoking Jimi's great Wes Montgomery-style licks and its spontaneous jam-like quality. The spirit of this tune here on this CD is very much as I played it then! Hope you enjoy. It was a pleasure for me to record these songs for this project.
Arlen Roth, 2002.

VIC VERGEAT
Music is a wonderful thing when it's straight from the heart. There are many great players who do just that with love and passion. Jimi was not just one of them, he was the first to "experience" blending all the colours of music into his own unique sound.
His songs, his voice, his playing belong to the beauty of the universe.

JOE COLOMBO
I played for many years regular guitar before splitting to the slide technique and I began to play guitar listening to Jimi Hendrix records. That’s why the approach that I have on my custom electrified Dobro guitars are still inspired by the Hendrix style…also today.

HIRAM BULLOCK
Jimi was the biggest single influence on my playing. When I was 13 years old, I stayed awake for 2 days (the time it took to travel from Panama to Maryland) so that I wouldn't forget the bass line to "Hey Joe" (that cool chromatic line on the fade). The production on his albums sounds like it was recorded tomorrow, it's so modern. He only recorded for 3 ˝ years, but his influence is still huge today, 32 years after his death......he was THE MAN !

TONY SPINNER
I never got to meet Jimi, but years ago I had a dream that I went to my high school and Jimi was in the cafeteria playing guitar. I walked over and sat down next to him at the table and asked him if I could jam with him, and he said, "Yes," and we started playing "Little Wing." After we jammed for a while, I asked him if he would sign my guitar. He did and the next morning when I woke up I went and got my guitar and autographed it, "Thank you Jimi Hendrix."

MARK DOYLE
"What is there left to say about Jimi Hendrix? When I first heard "Are You Experienced", it was like hearing music from outer space. It was the future. There was nothing that came before it that could have prepared anyone for this album. It blew everything wide open, and nothing was the same in its aftermath, especially the electric guitar.
But if you take psychedelia out of the equation (which was just the surface of his playing, really), what speaks to me most are the more subtle things: his ballad playing and his blues playing. The former featured a light touch and clean sound and seemed to derive from Curtis Mayfield and, I'm
sure, Jimi's days on the "chitlin circuit" playing soul music. As to the latter, his blues playing was in a class by itself, melding Albert and B.B. King into Jimi's psychedelic melting pot.
There has to this day never been anyone to fill the hole left by Jimi Hendrix's tragically early demise."

PAT TRAVERS
When I was twelve I got my first guitar from my uncle who owned a music store in Ottawa, Canada where my family had just moved to. I was just getting started when I heard either Purple Haze or Foxey Lady for the first time. Needless to say it completely blew my mind. And then when I saw the "Are You Experienced?" album with the picture of Jimi, Noel and Mitch on the cover it was like seeing people from another planet. Also the sound of the guitar was like nothing else anybody had ever heard at the time, or since for that matter.
My school mate, Stephen Peacock, had a set of drums in his basement at home so we would jam together and listen the album over and over again. Our parents thought we were nuts but didn't discourage us from trying to play music.
When "Axis, Bold As Love" came out I discovered that it was ok to be a bad-ass guitar player and write sensitive lyrics as well (Little Wing, Castles Made Of Sand, etc.).
When we heard that Jimi was going to playing the Capital Theater In Ottawa we immediately bought tickets.
I believe the show was March 19th 1968.
Having read about Hendrix smashing and setting his guitar on fire at the Monterey Festival I bragged to my friends that if he did that at the Ottawa show I would grab a piece of his guitar.
I had the aisle seat, 12th row at the theater and when Jimi and the Experience came on I went into a trance-like dream state. I had never seen one Marshall amp let alone three amps and six cabinets. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard in my life. Jimi was so cool looking with his green velvet outfit and, black with the silver chain, hat set just right on his afro hair-do.
He played a lot of the stuff from the first album and few things from Axis. But when he started into "Wild Thing" and was humping the amp and throwing the guitar around the place went nuts. He didn't actually break the guitar but he had it down on the stage and was pulling strings off it. Well that's when I completely lost my mind. I ran down to the front of the stage as did a bunch of other people. A broken string popped within reach and some kid grabbed it and it pulled the guitar forward. As the neck of the Strat came into my reach I grabbed for it. My hands were in a death-grip on Jimi's Strat! Unfortunately the strap was still around Jimi's neck and he was pulled forward along with the guitar. The next thing that happened was the drummer for the opening band, The Soft Machine, came running out of the wings and landed a fist on my jaw. This snapped me back to reality and I stepped away quickly just as huge fight broke out in front of the stage. Someone tried to steal Jimi's hat but they didn't get very far.
So anyway I got to touch Jimi Hendrix's guitar, with him attached to it, and I was a hero, albeit a foolish one, at school the next day. Years later I received a tape of the show I saw but it ran out before Wild Thing, so I don't have that infamous moment from my past anywhere but in my mind. I know I'll never forget The Experience.

JOHN NITZINGER
It was an honor to be asked to participate in this project and pay tribute to one of the all time greats, Jimi Hendrix......I was attracted to the controlled power of feedback , max volume, and effects, that
expressed such a sexual and liberating sound..." crotch rock " !.........Jimi truly set us all " stonefree "......thank you Jimi.......John Nitzinger

MIKE ONESKO
When I first heard Hendrix I was totally blown away he changed my life. When I first got Are You Experienced I stayed up all nite listening to it over and over again.
Hendrix was and still is the KING OF ELECTRIC GUITAR.

FOR THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN EXPERIENCED: A WORD ON JIMI'S LEGACY
by Dave Thompson

If Jimi Hendrix had lived, what sort of music would he be making today? Past his 60th birthday now, past "it" in terms of keeping up with the young bucks that dominate modern rock and pop, he would be one of rock's aristocracy, of course, a revered elder statesman and, no matter what had befallen him over the past three decades, he would remain a legend - no man who burst onto the scene with the incandescence that the young Hendrix trailed could be anything but.

But, would he have continued in the rock'n'roll format that cemented his celebrity? Might he have returned to the blues that were always his first love? Could he have delved deeper into the jazz-funk fusion hybrids that informed his Band of Gypsies? The music that Hendrix left behind - just three full albums, but a veritable mountain of out-takes, sessions and live recordings - echoes with clues that point in all of these directions. But that is to assume that he would never have advanced even further, to push the frontiers of his music into entirely new realms, unimaginable new genres.

In the mind's eye, Hendrix will always be the 20-something showman, flamboyance personified, flash and fiery, strutting like a peacock, strumming like a man possessed. But time brings more than age to a player. It brings dignity as well - perhaps he'd be a classicist today, scoring movies with painstaking decorum, holding concerts in vast, darkened opera houses, and laughing off his days as a pop star with the same casual grin and wave of his hand that he always employed when discussing ancient history.

Who knows?

No matter where his life's journey took him, however, one thing is undisputable. In the course of just four years, between his arrival in London in September 1966, and his death in that same city in September, 1970, Jimi Hendrix not only reinvented the rules of rock guitar playing, he reinvented the guitar itself. And the generations of players that followed him have reaped the rewards of his discoveries.

There were great guitarists before Hendrix, of course - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Scotty Moore, Chuck Berry. But they themselves admitted that they paled before all that Hendrix accomplished, not necessarily because he was a better player, but because he was a more complete player. And it is that completeness to which future generations aspired, with Jimi Hendrix the template around which they mapped their own aspirations.

The 15 guitarists who came together to record "Voodoo Crossing" trust in that template implicitly - but they also acknowledge that the template itself is not enough. Among the first lessons any guitarist learns is that a good musician can always learn somebody else's solos. It takes a great one to embellish them, and turn them into something else. And that was the principle that guided this album, the desire to pay tribute not to Jimi Hendrix as a guitarist, a songwriter, a singer for any player with a few chords at his disposal can do that; but to Jimi Hendrix as the wellspring for more than three decades of subsequent discovery, improvement and movement.

Of course the songs that the artists chose, and which were recorded especially for this album, are those that rank among Hendrix's best-loved recordings. "Hey Joe" was his first ever hit single, "Voodoo Chile" his first Number One, "Third Stone From The Sun" was his greatest psych freak-out, "Red House" his tribute to the blues gods of his youth. But, as you listen to the versions here, what you hear is not a simple recounting of all that Hendrix himself brought to them all those years ago. It is a journey into everything that he might have delivered had he returned to them later, with the technology that later decades brought to his art, and with the knowledge - and, again, dignity - that time brought to his playing.

Hendrix himself never lived to hear Funk or Punk Rock, Heavy Metal or Hip Hop. He never used a sampler and heard only the earliest synthesizers. His greatest recordings were executed in studios that would seem quaint, if not unimaginably primitive, by modern standards, a world in which razorblades and sticky tape were as much a part of the engineer's arsenal as microphones and instruments, where tape recorders were huge, clunky things that required hours of fiddling simply to set up an overdub, and where stereo sound was still a gimmick that the music industry was trying to perfect.

Only in his imagination could he soar far beyond such restrictions. In conversations and interviews, he envisaged a time when music flew unfettered by any of the limitations that were imposed upon it, whether by technological roadblocks or audience expectations and, although he died long before those dreams began to come true, his music itself has survived to see a day when at least some of those speculations have been transformed into reality.

There are no brutal reinventions on "Voodoo Crossing," no attempts to transplant a song from the place where Hendrix left it, into some new-fangled modern milieu. "Castles Made Of Sand" has not been rewired as an electro-punk hip-hop rave rap anthem. But the spirit that allowed modern music to travel in each (and more) of those directions is here regardless, because that is the spirit that Jimi Hendrix himself worshipped, that is the spirit that he personified. And that is the tribute that the artists here bring.